philwilson.org

The easy way to convert BBC RealAudio files to mp3 on Windows

12 April, 2006

After a couple of years of using uncountable tools, and despite their ever-expanding list of podcasts etc. I think I’ve finally hit the perfect combo for downloading those Radio4 “listen again” RealPlayer files or entire streams from the BBC and converting them to mp3 (and ogg).

You will need two tools:

Both of these apps are Windows GUI tools, easy to use and free (shareware).

You can copy and paste .ram URLs into Net Transport and it will download the .rm or .ra files for you. You can also schedule downloading from a stream so that you can, for example, get the breezeblock.

Once the download is complete, you can then open the downloaded RealPlayer file or files in Switch and convert them into mp3 or ogg, which you can then happily transfer over to your iPod or other mp3 player. Brilliant.

A word of warning – I’ve been using Switch for a couple of days, and it’s worked fine, but it does have a 14-day trial period after which the “advanced” features are turned off. The documentation states that this includes converting files from the following formats: .DSS, .SRI, .ACT, .RCD, .REC , and .SHN. Fortunately I’ve never heard of most of these so it shouldn’t be a problem, but if I run into any difficulties after another couple of weeks, I’ll let you know.

See other posts tagged with general and all posts made in April 2006.

Comments

Chao Xian
17 May, 2006 at 10:33

Net Transport has a 30-day trial before you have to buy ($25). D’oh!

Pip
17 May, 2006 at 11:32

The older versions (which are still lurking around on the net) don’t have this, they just bug you every now and again to register.

Which, of course, if you find the software useful, you should do!

Anonymous
28 June, 2006 at 17:38

you can download radio1 too,
simply drag over a radio4 url and tehn edit using the final name in the radio1 integrated player url. hope that kind of makes sense

dengyu_li
30 June, 2006 at 08:12

i don’t know why you remove my comment?????????? may be for my adding of some url, but see the people called “Chao Xian”, in his comment, there is also the url, why did you remove his comment? this is not fair!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pip
30 June, 2006 at 08:16

You always link to the same site, which looks like a spam site to me. Chao Xian adds something to the conversation and links to a site which isn’t his own.

dengyu_li
01 July, 2006 at 01:19

how did you know that site isn’t chao xian’s? may be all the site are his, but you just didn’t know~~~~~~~~~~~
i am just a new to the blog, so i am not familiar with some rules, i just think you can tell me, but not remove my comment, so crude.

Pip
01 July, 2006 at 19:34

Actually, I know him in real life, so I know he doesn’t. Also, his post wasn’t simply an advert for a website (regardless of who owns it), it was a link to a direct download of the file I was talking about in my post.

I routinely delete comments which look like they are just adverts for websites added by spam robots, and I’m afraid to say that yours looked like one.

Had you instead maybe linked to a blog post you had written about the same piece of software, or linked to a blog post which had a link to a piece of software which did the same thing as my post is talking about, I would have left your comment.

callum
15 November, 2006 at 14:56

if you are a linux user then this handy little script will do the whole thing for you. here is my mary ann hobbs breezeblock to ogg vorbis downloader:

#!/bin/bash
# catchbreezeblock – capture “Radio1 Breezeblock”
# copy this file to your home area and
# chmod u+x thisfilename
# then run it by:
# ./thisfilename

# Just use todays date in the filename
DATE=date +%F # Save the date as YYYY-MM-DD

# Where to save it – the Breezeblock became the “Radio 1 Experimental” in October 2006
FILE=/tmp/music/breezeblock.$DATE.ogg
#STREAM=http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/shows/rpms/radio1/breezeblock.rpm
STREAM=http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/shows/rpms/radio1/hobbs.rpm

# tags for the OGG Vorbis file
AUTHOR=”Mary Ann Hobbs”
ALBUM=”Radio 1″
TITLE=”Breezeblock – $DATE”

# Use mplayer to capture the stream $STREAM to the file $FILE
/usr/bin/mplayer -really-quiet -cache 500 -ao pcm:file=”$FILE.wav” -playlist “$STREAM”

# Encode to .ogg, quality 2, and tag the file
echo OggEnc $TITLE, $AUTHOR, $ALBUM
oggenc -q 2 -t “$TITLE” -a “$AUTHOR” -l “$ALBUM” -n “1/1” -G “Radio” -R 48000 -o “$FILE” “$FILE.wav”

# Remove the raw audio data file
echo Cleaning up
rm “$FILE.wav”

Pip
15 November, 2006 at 16:28

Thanks for that callum – very useful.

Golden
21 February, 2007 at 10:42

Didn’t work for me – says it can’t tell the size and hangs up

Phil Wilson
21 February, 2007 at 12:23

Net Transport you mean?

I think the BBC recently changed how their files work so you’ll need to download the .ram file, open it up in notepad and copy/paste the URL of the .rm file into Net Transport instead.

It’s a pain in the bum, I know.